drew, would you guys ever make belts? just basic simple ones. i found it really hard to get a good quality leather belt that wasnt ridiculously priced, with a simple buckle back when i was looking for one. i finally found a perfect one but it was rlbl and retailed at 350. lucky me it was on sale, but i figured id be pretty easy for you guys, to add them in

main point being the belt im referring to could have goten my halfway to a TOJ leather

drew, would you guys ever make belts? just basic simple ones. i found it really hard to get a good quality leather belt that wasnt ridiculously priced, with a simple buckle back when i was looking for one. i finally found a perfect one but it was rlbl and retailed at 350. lucky me it was on sale, but i figured id be pretty easy for you guys, to add them in
main point being the belt im referring to could have goten my halfway to a TOJ leather

check out the fine fellow who just posted above you, he makes lovely belts

it was called russet red or something, it hasnt been available for a long while (like end of 2010)
even after 2 years of pretty consistent wear its still stiff enough to stand on its own

also steering the discussion back to current content, white obcds on the cop list now. drew if you were gonna try and implement a hidden placket minimalist style shirt as well how long do you think itd be until we'd see it?

drew, would you guys ever make belts? just basic simple ones. i found it really hard to get a good quality leather belt that wasnt ridiculously priced, with a simple buckle back when i was looking for one. i finally found a perfect one but it was rlbl and retailed at 350. lucky me it was on sale, but i figured id be pretty easy for you guys, to add them in
main point being the belt im referring to could have goten my halfway to a TOJ leather

I might make belts later (shipping is kind of a hassle since they aren't large but would make up a lot of the price, just like white tees and all that) but I am not really into the natural leather leathercraft style belts personally, and there are plenty of people doing them well, zissou and Cooper, etc. I wouldn't be making them with my own hands like those types of belts are made, I prefer more manufactured-looking belts with finer detailing, more along the lines of that high fashion RTW aesthetic rather than Americana type things. I guess the natural leather belts might go with like, the Bball, but the rest of the leathers (especially black) probably call for something more refined and also, black.

I don't know, might be like $20,000+ worth of leather one has to custom order from the tannery (it would be in Japan but ordered to Korea) - the minimum order is something in the thousands of square feet (the squares are like $4 a pop) - and then as with fabric, but more so because leather is natural and variegated - there's tons of waste and you're not getting anywhere near that raw amount for actual use. It kinda sucks. We've never custom ordered leather like that because of their minimums. We just buy what they have in stock, it's more staple stuff that they offer to various parties. Locally, most of the nicer things go to bag makers and stuff. They can use less material and create a higher priced item. I've never seen anybody in the local Korean market sell leather jackets from the same NZ lamb we use, just not come across a maker who works with that thickness or hide quality. They were obsessed with the thin crinkly vegetable tanned leathers for a long time, probably still are. I never liked those much. The effect is kinda 'disposable Euro trendy' looking.

Anybody from Toronto here with one of these jackets? How much of the year are you able to wear them for?
Fall and Spring don't seem to last very long, and it kinda seems that it might be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter for these. Thoughts?

I used to wear my calf jackets, a tee, and a scarf all throughout winter when I lived in the area, and I was always warm enough.

I totally understand the issue with minimums, but I can think of several leathercrafters who would be happy to buy FQHH scraps from you.

Well, while the FQHH might make a good jacket - I'm not sure how well it translates to other leathercrafts. For jacket use it'd come at 4oz, so rather thick for a jacket, rather thin for anything else... and the real kicker is - some of the horse like the russet we had, that had a rather large-scale grain to it, and that's fine on something with some expanse to it like a garment, whereas I feel the grain would be rather disproportionate and large for a small leather good. It's just way different stuff. I could be proven completely wrong since the sky is the limit with creativity, but that's just how we parse leathers at the wholesalers - actually, the leather intended for small leather goods and garments are sold in two completely separate 'towns' of Seoul that we go to, there's no overlap. That's mostly like 2-4T calf sheets for belts and then thinner smooth calf for wallets. Garments and bags use the thinner softer leathers. Finally, there's a lot of waste but the scraps are never very useable for anything - when cutting they cut as tight as possible and the scraps end up being small little football shapes or random hourglass skinny strips. If they're any larger than that it's because they cut around a defect or scar. The garment leather scraps wouldn't be big enough to do much more than make little pocket flashings for a dog-sized leather jacket. lol

It's pretty amazing how different shell cordovan and FQHH are - one is incredibly silken and tight with a moistness to it from the tanning process; FQHH tends to be rough, wide grained, and pretty crunchy. I've noticed that the horse we get from Japan was always rather rough. I get why people like it, and there was a couple nice colors out of it, but I never saw it as being nicer looking than the other leathers. I still rather like just plain black lamb, to be perfectly honest. Slap some gunmetal or silver zips on black lamb, any of the designs - they just work and express a look that I want. Our order logs have been full for two years straight, but if they weren't, I'd get a bunch of jackets in the black lamb for myself - would like a 4-zip moto still (never had one that I kept) another CWU-45 (gave away the one I had) a QDR, and maybe a 4-zip DR, all in black lamb with silver zips, and then maybe a dark brown goat A2 again.